Full coverage: 2016 Rio Olympics

A Syrian amputee swimmer who has been granted asylum in Greece, has been selected as a torch-bearer for the 2016 Rio Games. He is scheduled to run with the Olympic flame through a refugee camp in Athens on Tuesday. It will be the first time that a refugee has served as a Olympic torch-bearer since 1936, when the first torch relay occurred during the Summer Olympics in Berlin.

According to the United Nations refugee agency, Ibrahim al-Hussein crossed the Aegean from Turkey to Greece on a rubber boat in 2014 after having lost part of his leg in a bombing in Syria.

He has since been given asylum in Greece. 27-year-old al-Hussein said all of the adversity he went through was like a test...

"The whole thing was like a test. Not a small thing to go through...but I'm just like everyone else," he said.

As the children of a swimming coach, al-Hussein and many of his 13 siblings swam competitively from the age of five. He used a 36-metre high suspension bridge in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor as a diving board until it was destroyed in 2013 during the war.

His right leg was amputated from the middle of the calf following the injuries he received in a bombing. He now walks with a prosthetic leg that a doctor arranged to be given to him for free.

Al-Hussein now trains at a 2004 Athens Olympics complex and also plays with a wheelchair basketball team that competes across Greece. He said holding the Olympic flame will be "an honor".

"After 20 years...it is such an honor," he said.

Athletes said choosing Al-Hussein as a torch-bearer reflects one major goal of developing the Games... eliminating war and pursuing peace.

The Olympic torch was lit in Ancient Olympia in southern Greece on Thursday. It will arrive in Brazil on May 3rd for a 100-day relay across that country, ahead of the opening ceremony on August 5th.